Update: We had a chance to talk with Electronic Art's VP of corporate communications, Jeff Brown, and he spoke towards why EA has decided to abandon online passes.

"There's not much to say. The online pass came out in 2010. It was a way of packaging together a suite of post-launch content and services for people. There was also an element for people who bought the game second sale. It never really caught on. People didn't like it. People told us that they didn't like it and you know, we went through a cycle and we're about to put out some new games and we just decided not to do that anymore. We're 100 percent committed to creating on-going content and services so the consumers get more value out of the game – you know games like Battlefield and FIFA where there's all sorts of new things that get added all the time – but the whole idea of packaging it up with an online pass, clearly it was not popular, so we listened to people and we stopped doing it."

We asked if this new policy will affect released games that have existing online pass structures, and Brown said he would check on that question and get back to us.

Original story: Electronic Arts has decided to leave the controversial system that requires players to purchase or redeem a code to access a game's online features behind.

EA's senior director of corporate communications John Reseburg confirmed the discontinuation of the program in an e-mail to VentureBeat. Reseburg said EA launched the online pass program, "As an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn’t respond to the format. We’ve listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward.”

This certainly isn't the end to online passes appearing in other games, but moving forward, Electronic Arts titles won't require you to either purchase an online pass, or redeem a code to play online. It's good news, especially when you consider our predictions of a world where the online pass has run rampant.

[Source: Venture Beat]